A dump body is a piece of machinery used to receive material from one location, hold the material during transport to another location, and then deposit the material in the new location. Typically, dump bodies are used by earth moving machines such as single chassis dump trucks, or articulated dump trucks, for example, to move a payload that may include dirt, rocks, concrete, or the like.
A dump body mounted on a dump truck may carry a payload from one location to another location. Then, another machine may remove the payload from the dump body. Alternately, the dump truck may have an actuator supported by the chassis and disposed under the dump body. When the actuator is activated the dump body becomes inclined, which allows gravity to remove the payload from the dump body without the need of another machine.
While effective, an issue arises when the dump body is completely filled. Some material may sit on the top surface of the sidewalls of the dump body and fall off while the dump truck is in motion. This can cause the road to become blocked, materials to be lost, or injury to workers near the truck. Additionally, the material sitting on the top surface may cover the edge of the sidewall, causing an operator of a loader to spend extra time locating the edge of the side wall or risk damage to the loader or the dump body while loading and unloading the dump body. Therefore, a need exists for a dump body which better retains material in the dump body and allows an operator of a loader to quickly recognize the edge of the dump body to avoid wasting time and damaging the equipment.
Another issue arises specifically for articulated dump trucks. An articulated dump truck may be split into two separate chassis, one chassis including the operator cabin and engine while the other includes the dump body, and connected by a column that allows rotation of each chassis with respect to the other. Articulated dump trucks offer greater flexibility when traveling over rough or steep terrain than dump truck that consist of only one chassis. However, the chassis including the dump body is prone to rolling while fully loaded, in part because of a relatively high center of gravity of the body and payload. While one solution to this problem would be to increase the width to height ratio of the dump body, the size of the dump bodies are limited by roadways which the articulated dump trucks are transported on and by the paths the trucks travel on in the work area. Thus, a need exists for a dump body which can carry the same payload while reducing the center of gravity of the entire dump body and chassis while not increasing the width to height ratio of the dump body.